Commerce depends on a vast number of financial transactions that distribute funds amongst participants such as merchants, customers, companies, and other entities. Traditional methods of conducting financial transactions consist of an exchange of currency, which may include paper currency, checks, credit cards, and electronic transfers. With each type of currency, a number of processes are typically necessary to fulfill a transaction. The processes may include a payment fulfillment process, paperwork, and processes performed by a financial institution such as a bank, credit union or third-party processor in communication with financial institutions.
In addition, some financial transactions have moved online. For instance, it is commonplace for entities to transfer payments across the Internet to complete a transaction. In addition to the Internet, other electronic forms of communication enable payment transmission, such as mobile telephony including wired and wireless communications.
To facilitate these financial transactions, payment information such as account numbers may be stored. However, once stored, this payment information may be compromised by theft, poor security policies, and so forth. Or, the customer may be subjected to a “phishing” attack and may be enticed to disclose sensitive information, such as payment information, to a malicious entity.
Currently, attempts to safeguard payment information involve increasing the barriers to accessing this payment information. For example, merchants and banks may deploy more robust firewalls, encryption, physical security, security policies, and so forth. However, these current techniques do not reliably safeguard payment information after compromise of these barriers nor do they protect the information from phishing attacks or other attacks where the customer divulges the information.